


The Afterplace

by themountainkingsreturn



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Gen, Heaven, Post-Canon, The Problem Of John Mitchell, a human way to mend it, everyone is dead and still it continues, how to fix the unfixable, let Annie be loved and cherished, let George find strength, let Nina be a mother
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-22 21:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7455304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themountainkingsreturn/pseuds/themountainkingsreturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heaven is not really Heaven at all. Heaven isn’t a place, per se. It’s really (and please don’t cringe) a state of mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a long time coming. I wanted to finish it before I even began posting it, but I have enough worked out now that it's doable. This story (canon and otherwise) is very important to me. Please enjoy. More chapters to come.
> 
>  
> 
>  _In breaking news: the sky. The earth. Life. Existence as an unchanging plain with horizons of birth and death in the faint distance. We have nothing to speak about. There never was._  
>  \- Welcome to Nightvale
> 
>  
> 
>  _I forgive all the endless hours you were away._  
>  \- Goat Island, Letter to a Young Practitioner
> 
>  
> 
>  _Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love._  
>  \- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
> 
>  
> 
> _You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say_  
>  _or love me back._  
>  _I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not feeding yourself to a bad man_  
>  _against a black sky prickled with small lights._  
>  _I take it back._  
>  _The wooden halls like caskets. These terms from the lower depths._  
>  _I take them back._  
>  _Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed._  
>  _Crossed out._  
>  _Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something underneath the floorboards._  
>  _Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle_  
>  _reconstructed._  
>  _Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all_  
>  _forgiven,_  
>  _even though we didn’t deserve it._  
>  \- Richard Siken, Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

It’s quiet in Heaven, and Annie makes tea.

No, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. I should explain:

Heaven is not really Heaven at all. Heaven isn’t a place, per se. It’s really (and please don’t cringe) a state of mind.

The place we actually think of as Heaven is called the Afterplace. It is what it sounds like.

The Afterplace is, essentially, just a celestial stadium to house the souls of our world. A really, really big stadium. Actually, it’s more like the Holodeck from Star Trek. A Holodeck spanning infinite dimensions, and with compounded layers that somehow fit, fractal-like, as souls upon souls are stacked upon and against each other in their simulated Places.

What makes the Afterplace into Heaven is what happens to the souls that inhabit it. You see, everything is laid bare in death. There’s no need for pretense, no need for self-preservation. The impulses of cruelty and self-loathing dissipate. True, unbounded contentment is possible because there are no _shoulds,_ no horrid feeling at the back of your mind that the other shoe is going to drop, as so often happens in Life. To be in the Afterplace is to be at peace. Simply put, heaven isn’t a Proper Noun, but instead the warmth of knowing you are in a place filled with unbridled, soul-juddering _love_.

Or, at least, that is what it says on the pamphlet. And as anybody who has ever worked in marketing knows, everything written in pamphlets is pounded out by an unpaid intern at three in the morning and shoved into a grubby little letterbox so a bored assistant can proof it and send it to printing. In short, don’t believe anything written on pamphlets, unless they are distributed by short women wearing hardhats and pins of fish on their lapels, in which case, believe everything.

But for Annie, heaven was the Pink House with George and Nina and Eve.

She’d been scared for a while because, even after Purgatory and, oh yeah, the whole _ghost_ thing, somehow she’d always worried about heaven turning out to be a candy floss palace with happy zombie people roaming about, a bit like _The Prisoner_ , maybe. Or what if it turned out to be all Biblical, with golden angels and the right hand of God and singing praises all day? What if the Men With Sticks And Rope were just a cover for some divine conceit?

But no. It was the Pink House, and the Real Hustle at the proper time on Thursdays for George, and Eve crying at all times of the night, and tea, Jesus, real tea that she could actually drink, and food that she could eat, and clothes she could change into. She spent three whole hours (or days, or years — time slid by strangely) trying on clothes in every color but grey: sexy little dresses, and real trousers and skirts and tops. She cried when she slid off the Ugg boots and the shirt and the leggings. She stood and looked at her body in the mirror and sobbed and laughed and then sobbed some more. The little scar on her knee was still there, and the mole beneath her left breast. All the same. All solid and _there_.

When she stepped out her front door, there was Bristol. But Bristol as it might have been if every century had happened at once — little thatched cottages and old Victorian townhouses and those funny white Elizabethan buildings with the dark beams, all seeming to grow out of the ground itself, twisting every which way up towards the heavens.

And the people were like the houses: all brighter and more colorful than they should have been. And they were all strange because, if you looked right at them, they were there, solid as you like. But if you looked out of the corner of your eye, they might seem to be a mass of pale rainbows, shimmering and indistinct, or perhaps like a bird, or a grey cloud walking slowly down the street wearing a waistcoat and top hat.

“Is the whole world up here?” she asked Nina one morning over sausages.

“So far as I can tell,” said Nina. “And maybe other worlds.”

“D’you think somebody’s living in Narnia?” Annie said, wide-eyed. “Or, you know, not _living,_ but…”

“Probably.”

“Lord, wish I was in Narnia.”

“Maybe we can go.”

Annie saw a lot of movies. They took Eve to see the new Disney film, she and Nina saw that horrible Valentine’s Day thing just for kicks. They went to bars, to restaurants, to museums, to London for a day.

They _lived_.

 

* * *

 

There was no pair of green knit gloves on the mantle. Annie looked. And there was only rarely a voice heard speaking a certain name in sadness or bitterness or fondness. There was no silver ring or green vest lovingly tucked away in a drawer, no useless wooden stake stashed in a closet, no leather coat on a hanger gathering dust.

But there might as well have been.

 

* * *

 

The knock came maybe a year in. Annie wasn’t sure. There weren’t any clocks or calendars. Night and day came seemingly whenever she was tired, and whenever she awoke. They hadn’t had any visitors yet (other than pizza — the deliveryman was a plump, pleasant woman who kissed their cheeks and told them to enjoy), so Annie nearly fell out of her chair in her haste to get to the door. She yanked on the handle, beaming.

Everything froze.

Mitchell was standing on the doorstep.

No.

No.

It wasn’t Mitchell.

It was a boy with a hollowed face and short, tousled hair. He was wearing shirtsleeves and old buttoned trousers.

This was John Mitchell. Who died in 1917 in France.

Annie’s heart ricocheted back into action, and she gazed, slack-jawed, down at the boy on her doorstep.

John Mitchell smiled nervously. Annie thought she might throw up. She knew that smile.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” she croaked.

She heard a muttered curse (“ _shhhhIT_ _”_ ) from the kitchen, and suddenly Nina barreled into her side.

Nina didn’t make a sound when she saw the boy, but she gripped Annie’s arm so tightly it hurt.

“Hello,” he said again.

“Hello,” said Nina.

Annie looked at Nina. She saw in Nina’s face that they had recognized the same thing: the absence of ninety years in a face otherwise so familiar. It didn’t feel real. Annie considered pinching herself, but settled for biting her tongue. It hurt a lot. _Not dreaming._

“Sorry if I’m intruding,” he said, and they both looked at him again sharply. He looked pale and nervous. “But are you…Nina and Annie?” he asked.

They just gaped at him.

“Yes,” Nina said finally, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said again. “Can we help you?”

“I’m…John,” said the boy. “John Mitchell.”

There was a breathless silence in the wake of that name. A silence in which Annie could hear her own heart pounding, and could almost hear, too, the ringing of the decades, like the truncated echo of a bell, that had been stripped from the name — or rather, had never existed. _John Mitchell._ John. Not Mitchell.

She felt Nina breathing beside her, torso pressed against Annie’s own. Annie wondered numbly if Nina had heard the same things in that silence as she had.

“Hello, John,” Nina said quietly, then said, “Do you want to come in?” suddenly sounding for all the world as though she were merely inviting in a plumber.

John Mitchell only nodded, his throat tightening.

_His hair is all curled at the edges._

“Right. Well, come along in, then,” said Nina, moving a still frozen Annie gently aside. John Mitchell hesitated a moment, then entered the Pink House.

Nina shut the door behind him. “Go on through and sit down. _Annie_ _…_ ”

Annie started. Nina was gazing at her kindly, but there was a steely glint in her eye. _Pull yourself together_. “Why don’t you make tea?”

“Yeah,” said Annie, nodding with effort. “Yeah, okay.” She somehow moved one foot in front of another and made it to the kitchen. Then it was all she could do not to collapse against the fridge. She drew in great, shuddering breaths and closed her eyes.

John Mitchell. Twenty-four years old, _really truly twenty-four_ , in their sitting room. On their couch. Where Mitchell used to sit. Well, he used to sit on the real one, not the celestial version. But, all the same.

But it wouldn’t be the same. It couldn’t.

She finally managed to gulp down enough steadying breaths to feel up the task of making tea, though her hands shook, and she nearly poured boiling water on herself. That would still hurt, even in Heaven (she’d checked the box for “simulated pain (not including fatal or severely debilitating injuries)” because she hated to think that the last painful thing she’d ever feel was her fall down that flight of stairs). _George should be here_ , she thought suddenly and anxiously, but George had gone out to do the shopping half an hour ago.

When she tottered out with the tray and three mugs, John Mitchell was sitting on the couch next to Nina. He looked awkward. Annie set the tray down, but nobody touched the mugs.

John Mitchell nodded towards Annie. “So, you’re…”

“Annie,” she said.

“And you’re Nina,” he said. Nina smiled, then pressed her lips together in an expression that would have been a frown if it was anybody other than John Mitchell she was frowning at. He seemed too strange and delicate to expose to any emotion other than cautious interest. It was like he might shatter if they showed any hint of the storm roiling inside them. Or worse — he might leave.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Nina said, “how do you know our names?”

“Oh.” John Mitchell’s fingers dove into his pocket and fumbled about, eventually extracting a piece of crumpled paper, folded over many times into a tiny little package that had been so battered and creased that it resembled less a square than a cube.

“I got a letter,” he said.

He handed it to Nina.

Nina unfolded the paper with just the tips of her fingers, like an archeologist handling an artifact. Her mouth moved silently and her frown deepened as she read whatever was on it. She handed the paper to Annie, who in turn frowned down at it. Their address was typed at the top of the wrinkled page, followed by a single line of text:

_Their names are George, Annie and Nina. They knew you._

“ _Ah,_ ” Annie said, as thought that cleared anything up. “ _Right._ ”

“So…you got this letter,” Nina said. “And here you are.”

“Here I am,” said John Mitchell.

There was a long pause. Nina was looking down at her hands in her lap, thumbs lightly rubbing her forefingers. She kept licking her lips as though on the verge finding something to say. Annie looked at John Mitchell, and caught his eye for a split second before he looked away.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Annie asked suddenly.

Nina stared at her, but John Mitchell almost looked as if he’d been expecting this turn in the conversation. He didn’t look back at her.

“Teeth,” he said. Annie’s skin prickled.

“Teeth,” Nina repeated, her face resolutely blank.

“And a man called Herrick,” John Mitchell added. “He said if I became a vampire, he wouldn’t kill my men. I said yes.” For a moment, he looked like Mitchell. It was his jaw, Annie thought, the way it was thrust out. And something about the timbre, the conviction of his voice.

“Why are you here?” Nina asked softly. She sounded calm now, soothing, like how she might talk to a distressed patient.

John Mitchell shifted in his seat. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. He stuck his hands between his knees. They must be cold. _He needs gloves_ , Annie thought.

“I want to know,” he said slowly. “I want to know what happened to me after I died. I…do I kill? What happened to me? How did I end up in — Christ, where is this —”

“Bristol,” said Annie. “You lived with us. This was your house.”

“For how long?”

Annie and Nina looked at each other. “Two years?” said Nina. Annie nodded.

“But…” John Mitchell looked around, eyes alighting on the television, the decor, “ _when_ was this?”

“Er…two-thousand and nine? Give or take a few months,” said Annie.

“So what did I do the rest of the time?”

“Well…” said Nina. “That’s…”

“Quite a long story,” finished Annie.

“Then I suppose that’s why I’m here,” said John Mitchell.

Nina and Annie glanced at each other. Annie’s voice seemed to have lodged in her throat. She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning,” said Nina. “We’ll tell you everything we know.”

 

* * *

 

 Annie met George outside. He looked at her in confusion, arms bowing over laden shopping bags, as she watched him approach the doorstep.

“What’s — ”

“John Mitchell is in there.”

George looked at her blankly, then his mouth fell open in a perfect, comical O.

“What — Mitchell is _here_? In the _house_?”

“No, no…not _Mitchell_ _…_ exactly. _”_

George stared, his expression verging on panic. “Do we know another John Mitchell…?”

“No, it _is_ Mitchell. Just…different.”

“Okay,” said George slowly. “Could you elaborate? Maybe?”

She took a deep breath. “It’s John Mitchell,” she said. “From 1917. The day he got recruited. I think…I think he’s Mitchell’s soul.”

George stared.

“Oh my — oh my god…how? How does that — “

“He just showed up,” Annie said. “He got a letter. It’s got our address, just our address and our names. He wants to know everything about…about Mitchell.”

“Oh, Christ…” George shuffled a bit as though searching for a place to drop the shopping bags. “How much have you told him?”

“Nina’s…doing her best.”

“But, but,” George spluttered, “are you telling him about the _murders?_ And, and the…Jesus, the _massacre_? _Does he know what he did?_ ”

Annie crossed her arms convulsively. “I don’t know! I came outside to wait for you!”

“Wait, why does Nina have to do it?” said George. He was watching her curiously. “You knew him longer. You knew more.”

Annie swallowed. “I…it’s a bit hard to look at him. It’s like looking into a bright light.”

George snorted and said, “Annie, if you’re going to use clichés — “

“George!”

He sighed huffily and pressed his lips together, nodded and swallowed. “Right. Well.” He gulped down a breath. “In we go.”

Nina was speaking softly when they entered. John Mitchell’s brow was furrowed as he listened, hands between his knees, staring into the darkened TV. Nina looked up and raised her eyebrows slightly at them as she continued.

“…trapped Herrick in the cell with him and killed him when he transformed. That was…that was when he scratched me. I was a werewolf, too, you see.”

Annie took the shopping bags from George and ferried them to the kitchen. She looked on from the cutout in the wall as George approached the sitting room. John Mitchell rose and extended his hand. George took it, looking surprisingly composed. Annie watched them shake hands. She felt oddly detached as she noted the formality in the gesture, because if it was really Mitchell, they would be hugging, they would be wrestling and laughing —

“Hello, John. I’m George.”

“Pleasure.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment, then George fumbled to drag the armchair in front of the coffee table, and sat. John Mitchell lowered himself slowly back to the couch.

“So, where are we?” George asked, looking to Nina.

“I told him about how you killed Herrick,” Nina said evenly. How strange to be laying out Mitchell’s story as though for a complete stranger, Annie thought. Even a stranger that looked just like him.

“Ah. Right,” said George.

“Look,” said John Mitchell. He ran his hands through his hair distractedly. Annie felt her insides clench. “I don’t think I need a blow-by-blow account. I can’t…not yet.”

“Of course,” said George.

“Just…” His leg started to jiggle. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I came, this was stupid — “

“You need to know,” Annie said. She had stepped out of the kitchen, and three heads snapped towards her as she stood in the doorway. “You need to know if your decision was worth it. If you saved anyone by doing it.”

He looked at her, and there was something bright in his eyes, something sharp.

“Because we made that decision, too,” Annie continued. Her voice shook, but she plunged on. “All of us, and Mitchell. See, I think he saved himself.”

John Mitchell’s face smoothed. She knew he had noticed her tone, the grief that still scratched at her voice.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” he said softly.

“Yes,” said George, heavy. “Mitchell is dead.”

“Is he here?”

“No,” Nina said quietly. “He didn’t get a door.”

“Vampires don’t have souls. You…were his soul,” said George, his voice a liquid tremor.

Annie frowned. Something was niggling at her brain. Something was strange. She watched John Mitchell inhale, watched the crease in his brow. Then she remembered what Hal had told her.

“Why aren’t you in Hell?”

George and Nina stared at her like she’d just begun speaking Norwegian.

“What’re you talking about?” George gaped.

“Hal Yorke,” Annie said, walking towards the sitting room, mug of tea clutched against her stomach. “He said that the Devil gets the souls of the people who become vampires. That’s the deal. So why are you in Heaven? You should be in Hell.”

John Mitchell winced, but met her eye steadily. “I don’t know,” he said, and Annie could see he wasn’t lying. She’d seen Mitchell lie. She knew what that looked like. “I really don’t. I don’t know how long I’ve been here…it feels like ages, but it might have been days. I can’t tell.”

Nina and George looked at each other.

“Right,” said George. “So, Annie, you’re saying that the souls of vampires go to…the Devil…which I still have a hard time believing in, frankly.”

“George, you’re in Heaven,” said Nina. “It’s not that much of a stretch.”

“Yeah, okay, but still. Annie, if vampires don’t come to Heaven, then how is he even here?”

“Well, that’s what I’m asking!” said Annie.

“Right. Okay. So what we have here,” said George shrilly, “is one soul, pre-vampire, not in Hell with the… _Devil_ …who may or may not actually have been in Heaven for very long, and even if he has, _shouldn’t be here at all_. Annie…” he said, “is it at all possible that your friend Hal was absolutely completely fucking dead wrong?”

“He was five-hundred years old! I think he knew what he was talking about!”

“Then what the hell is _he_ doing here? No offense,” George added.

“None taken,” said John Mitchell.

“But seriously, _what is he doing here_?”

“Maybe,” said Nina quellingly, “there are things that even very old vampires aren’t privy to. God knows we’re used to unexplained phenomena. We should have known it wouldn’t stop in the afterlife.” Nina sounded almost darkly amused. Of _course_ things just couldn’t stay normal. They had no normal.

George whimpered and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. John Mitchell looked up at Annie as though seeking instruction.

“We need to find someone to explain,” said Annie, half to him, half to the others. “We have to find… _somebody_.”

“Who?” said George.

“An angel?” suggested Nina quietly, teeth on lips. George snorted.

“An _angel?”_ he scoffed. “Come on.”

“Well, they exist here, don’t they?” said Nina, crossing her arms defensively.

George frowned at her. “Sorry,” he said, “did I wake up in a convent?” He looked around at Annie as though seeking backup, but she only shrugged. “The Devil, Angels…next thing, you’ll be telling me you’re the incarnation of the Holy Spirit thing.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Nina said.

Annie looked at John Mitchell, who was watching them bicker with an expression of overwhelm, eyes flicking between George and Nina like a spectator at a tennis match.

“Okay!” she said, over the sound of arguing. “What we need…is a plan. We need to relax, we need to — “

“Teambuild?” intoned George.

“ _Research_ ,” said Annie firmly. George scowled. “We’ll find the answers, John,” she said. He held her gaze. “We’ll find out why you’re here.”

John Mitchell nodded. Annie had to drag her eyes away then, away from those terribly familiar features. A chill ran up her skin, and she gripped the hot mug tighter in her hands.

“ _Angels,_ Nina?” George said.

Nina threw a pillow at him.


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The question was, of course, what to do with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Let’s say you’re still completely in the dark but we love you anyway. We love you. We really do._  
>  \- Richard Siken, You Are Jeff
> 
>  
> 
> _And would it have been worth it, after all,_  
>  _After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,_  
>  _Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,_  
>  _Would it have been worth while,_  
>  _To have bitten off the matter with a smile,_  
>  _To have squeezed the universe into a ball_  
>  _To roll it toward some overwhelming question,_  
>  _To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,_  
>  _Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—_  
>  _If one, settling a pillow by her head,_  
>  _Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;_  
>  _That is not it, at all.”_  
>  \- t.s. eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The question was, of course, what to do with him.

There was a tense, furtive debate in the kitchen about where exactly he should sleep, _if_ he wanted to stay with them at all — a fact suggested by Nina, which caused Annie and George to stop in their tracks and skitter back out to the sitting room to ask. And, yes, yes, he supposed he would like to stay for a few days while they tried to find answers, so they ran back to the kitchen to a waiting Nina for further debate. George was reluctant to let him have Mitchell’s room, and suggested that they put him up in Annie’s room, at which point Annie was forced to remind him that she did in fact possess a body now (or a spirit copy of a body) that needed to sleep and dress and so on. Then Nina gave George a Look, and so it was decided that he would take Mitchell’s room, at least for the time being.

Annie dashed upstairs to tidy while Nina informed John Mitchell of the arrangements. He had no suitcase, she’d noticed. Maybe he’d only expected to be there a couple of hours. What had he thought he’d find? she wondered. Other vampires? A clan? A coven? Victims?

Had he even expected to find friends?

Annie reached the landing, but halted before Mitchell’s closed door. She suddenly felt as though she were about to intrude on something private, sacred. As though Mitchell himself might still be sleeping in that bed when she walked in. She’d peeked in the door only once before, when she’d first come to Heaven. The room had been just as it was before they left: strewn with clothes, cluttered with records and books, and that one lone saxophone she’d never actually seen him play. She’d never asked if he could really play it. She wished she had.

She wondered if she should offer up a prayer. Which would be ironic, given both what Mitchell had been, and the fact that she was in Heaven. Was there any point to prayers here? But there still remained that sense of forbidding sanctity, of spirits lying in wait with sad mouths and staring eyes. She thought for a moment. No prayers came to mind, but only the slow curl of a smile, drifting up into the forefront of her mind as through from some dark, deep place. She swallowed thickly.

Annie opened the door. The smell of dust and old paper became almost overpowering as she stepped in — probably from the mildewing vinyl covers, and the fact that nobody had cleaned in there since they’d gotten to Heaven. There was also the sharp, woody scent of cheap cologne samples.

She began by picking up the clothes on the floor. She buried her nose in a few shirts. They smelled like dust. She put them into a hamper. She didn’t want to think about dust.

She tried to straighten the piles of junk, but somehow reordering the seemingly random stacks of magazines, books and CDs would take Mitchell out of the room, so she mostly just pushed them into the corners. She pulled up the bed linens to be washed; she swept, dusted, changed a light bulb that had been out for god only knew how long, and Hoovered the carpet.

Finally, when she had spent more time arranging the fresh bedclothes than she felt was probably decent, she stepped back and surveyed her handiwork. It looked only faintly like Mitchell’s room now. It was neat and considerably better-smelling. The red-tinted shades on the windows were gone, and now orange light from the setting sun streamed in. In fact, the only evidence that someone named Mitchell had ever inhabited it was the small piles of clutter she’d gently nudged into the corners or along the baseboards. The rest had been artfully arranged on various surfaces as she imagined they might be in a catalogue, the saxophone taking pride of place, like an eclectic souvenir, by the door.

It looked neat and inhabitable.

She hated it.

A small part of her said she would be able to re-arrange it again when John Mitchell left. She could re-create the clutter and let the dust settle again. She could make it Mitchell’s room again.

The rest of her knew this was a lie.

When she got back downstairs, the sitting room was empty, enveloped in a dusky twilight, while Nina, George and John Mitchell sat in the bright kitchen, hands still cupping mugs of tea and coffee, voices rising in low murmurs.

“Room’s all ready,” Annie said brightly as she entered. John Mitchell turned to look at her sharply, as though he hadn’t noticed her walk in. She tried to make her voice more kind, more motherly. “So you can go up any time.”

“Thank you,” he said. Annie found herself watching his profile as he turned again towards George. She watched him as he began to speak again, and then as he listened intently to what George was saying, only dimly registering the contents of the conversation. Something about George’s old job as a porter. She drank in the sharp line of his nose and those funny dark brows and the curve of skin beneath his chin…

“Annie,” said Nina, jolting her, “do you have a preference about supper? We thought we’d do takeaway since…well, do you want anything in particular?”

“Pizza,” said Annie vaguely, finally wrenching her gaze away from John Mitchell. “Yeah, pizza sounds great.”

 

* * *

 

The food arrived after a remarkably short wait, something they’d grown pleasantly accustomed to as one of the many perks of being in the afterlife.

“So…it’s tomatoes and meat on…bread?” said John Mitchell, holding up a greasy slice dubiously.

“And cheese,” said George.

“And sometimes other stuff,” added Annie, licking tomato sauce off her fingers. “Peppers, pineapple…”

John Mitchell looked stricken. “What’s pineapple?”

“It’s a fruit in the Bromeliaceae family —“ George began, but was silenced by a look from Nina.

“If you don’t like it, George can make you something else,” Nina said, turning back to opening a letter.

John Mitchell nodded, and with the air of someone about to ingest cod-liver oil, took a bite.

 

* * *

 

“So, maybe pizza on the first night in a modern home…not the greatest idea,” said George over the faint retching coming from the bathroom.

Annie winced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have suggested…this is all my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Nina said judiciously.

“It’s just Mitchell loved pizza — “

“Yeah,” said George quietly. “But…not John Mitchell, apparently.”

They huddled against the wall, all together in a line as John Mitchell coughed feebly down the hall. Annie hugged herself, running the fabric of her blouse back and forth between her finger and thumb.

Nina was leaning slightly on George, who stood in the middle of their little group. She wore an expression that was impossible to read. It was just enough bordering on concern to keep George from noticing that anything might be amiss, but there was a definite thinness to her lips, a stiffness to her jaw. Nina, usually so solid, so dependable in all other things, frightened Annie when she looked worried.

On Earth, Annie had never understood — never _wanted_ to understand — why Nina never trusted Mitchell, why she seemed to loathe him more with each passing day. She hadn’t understood, until his last weeks in Honolulu Heights, until Nancy and the vampire beside the dark Box Tunnel train. Now she did. The knowledge sat in her stomach like a dead weight. What must Nina be thinking now that John Mitchell was in her house again?

“So what do we do tomorrow?” said George after a few more minutes of uncomfortable silence punctuated by occasional retching.

“Oh, I dunno,” said Nina absently, “I sort of fancied going down and seeing if they restocked cocoa powder at Tesco.”

George made a disapproving _don’t joke about this_ face. “No, what do we do about _him_?”

Nina rolled her eyes and squeezed his arm reassuringly. Her face had smoothed again. “We start to look for answers,” she said.

“But shouldn’t we…I don’t know…take a few days?” said Annie, “To adjust? I mean, it’s a big change. Living in the 20th century versus living with us now.”

George looked at her quizzically. “Annie, we all lived in the 20th century.”

“ _You know what I mean._ ”

“But _is_ he living with us now?” Nina said, a note of alarm in her voice. “Just like that?”

“Well…” George shifted uncomfortably. “He did come to us. And we asked him. I mean, look at him, he seems fine with it!”

“He’s retching into our toilet,” said Nina.

“Well, still…”

“I think we ought to ask him outright what he wants,” said Nina. “Just so everything’s out in the open.”

“Well, he’s certainly getting it all out at the moment — _ouch!_ Sorry, sorry.” George squirmed to dodge Annie’s swatting hand. “Just…does it _have_ to be tonight?” he said heavily, “Can’t we give it a few days?”

“That’s what I was saying!” said Annie.

“I just think,” said Nina, “we ought to be completely honest with him. And hope he does the same for us. And, in the end, he should be able to make the decision if he goes or stays. That’s all.”

“Right,” said George. “Well that’s…that’s good. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” echoed Annie.

“Yeah,” sighed Nina.

 

* * *

 

Annie couldn’t sleep.

This wasn’t actually unusual. Honestly, after three years of unceasing consciousness, it was a wonder she was able sleep at all. It had seemed such a foreign concept at first: lie down very still, close your eyes and wait to voluntarily pass out for eight or more hours. Most nights she slept fine now, but this was not one of them. She lay awake, staring up at the ceiling, very acutely aware of the presence of someone else in the next room over for the first time in a very long time. Finally, after what might’ve been hours or only forty-five minutes — again, _time —_ she got up and put on a pair of slippers and crept down the stairs.

Nina was awake. She was sitting in the half-dark rocking Eve. Something involving a car chase played, muted and tinny, on the television, barely loud enough to make out the shouted dialogue.

Annie made tea.

Curling herself on the couch next to Nina, she turned her attention to the television. They watched a man shoot a gun out of a cracked rear window, a woman scream, a villain escape. They did this sometimes. In the quiet time before their own sunrise, they sat without speaking, watching bad telly, marveling at Eve. If George knew, he didn’t say anything. It was their time.

But tonight, Nina spoke into the silence as the scene on the television shifted.

“But what _do_ we do?” she whispered.

Annie breathed in, out. “I s’pose we can go for coffee tomorrow. There’s a new cafe a few blocks down.”

Nina looked at her, confused. “Why coffee?”

“Well, John probably hasn’t ever had proper coffee. At least not since he left for the army.”

“They had coffee in the army.”

Annie wrinkled her nose. “Bean juice in a tin can is _not_ coffee.”

Nina’s mouth curved at the corner, as though she knew better than to argue with Annie’s logic.

The hero and heroine were kissing in the shower now. Nina snorted softly. Then she looked down at Eve.

“What…was she like?” she asked hesitantly.

“Who?”

“Eve.”

Annie looked at Eve too, eyes tracing the familiar, beloved pattern of downy swirls of pale hair on her scalp.

“She…” Her voice caught in her throat, and she had to begin again. “She was a good baby. Like she is now. Just the same really.”

“No,” said Nina quietly. “I mean…when she was grown up.”

“Oh,” Annie breathed. “Well…I was only with her for a bit —“

“But you did meet her,” said Nina, and there was a sort of pleading in her voice. “You met Eve.”

Annie was silent for a moment, watching the sleeping baby in Nina’s arms.

“She was…beautiful.”

“Is that all?” said Nina.

“No,” said Annie. “She…she was so clever. And so brave. She knew what she had to do, and she knew it would rewrite her so she never existed, but she did it anyways. She was a fighter, just like her mum.” Annie reached over to squeeze Nina’s hand, and Nina smiled. “She was wonderful. She saved the world, Nina.”

Nina was silent as she looked down at her daughter, and Annie thought she was close to tears. She squeezed Nina’s hand harder.

“It’s not fair.”

Nina’s voice was so soft Annie barely heard it over the television. She pretended she hadn’t, because she didn’t think it was her Nina was speaking to.

They sat there until Nina’s head drooped back onto the sofa and she began to snore softly. Annie tugged the blanket draped behind them free and tucked it around mother and child, then crept back upstairs. The sun was rising, but she got back into bed anyways and finally, finally let sleep pull her under.

 

* * *

 

They went for coffee in the morning.

The cafe, as it turned out, was so new that there were still boxes littering the floor. A pile of discarded and crumpled packing newspapers was stacked on one of the tables in the corner, and the floor was a mess of wood shavings and dust.

They picked their way around brooms and dustpans to the counter, where a scowling young woman with far too many piercings took their orders. They found a table not littered with packing paper, and sat down, George gloomily nursing a burnt tongue received when he tried to slurp down his drink right off the counter. He’d requested the day off work in order to sort out the whole John-Mitchell-existing thing. George had already had his job as a TA in the language department of the university when Annie and Eve arrived. The job was perfectly suited to George’s poly-lingual talents. Funny how things seemed to work out like that here.

Annie had paid for a small coffee for _John_ , as she'd begun to force herself to call him. It was difficult to take the Mitchell out; she felt a strange need to keep that name attached to him. But, she'd reminded herself, his name really _was_ John. "Mitchell" had been...what, then? A nickname? A change of identity? She'd never actually stopped to wonder about it. The army used surnames. Maybe that was it. Maybe he'd carried that around with him for ninety years, the name he'd been called as a soldier. How strange that she'd never thought about it until now.

Another thing she hadn't thought about was what they'd do once they got their coffee, other than swallow it down in silence. John didn't touch the drink she'd bought him, perhaps still wary of anything offered to him after the pizza fiasco. Nina had got herself some fancy black tea blend, which Annie was eying with a certain level of grumpy betrayal. Nina blew on her tea and took a sip, then turned to John.

"This is really nice, do you want to try it?" she said softly. John nodded and took the white porcelain mug, tentatively sipping at the hot tea. He gave a small smile, nodding again as he handed it back.

"Yeah, it’s good,” he said. “Er…tea isn’t really…”

“Your thing?” Nina said with a smile. When John looked confused, she flapped a hand. “I mean, you’re not really fond of it?”

“Er…no. Sorry.”

“Pity,” said Nina. “But, for the record, it’s nowhere are near as good as Annie’s." She shot a placating smile over the table, but Annie didn't smile back, didn’t do anything except stare and feel suddenly sick. She finally managed a pale lip twitch, but it faded the moment Nina looked away.

It was the way Nina had spoken so softly, so kindly to John. It had reminded her of another time there had been an amnesiac vampire in their house, and how Nina had nursed him, how Nina had become the consummate caregiver, the protector of all she loved, and how her reward for her efforts was to be betrayed by the man she'd tried to protect, cut open and left for dead.

John made a mumbled excuse and wandered over to the pile of yellowing newspapers. Annie barely noticed. Her hand clutched at her mug handle, but Nina and George were too busy watching John across the cafe to notice.

Annie forced herself to look up, to watch John rifle through the old, undated newspapers (none of the newspapers here had dates, only vague non-chronological events that may or may not involve one’s family and friends on Earth). Her frantic heart slowed slightly as she watched. He was frowning down at the papers, smoothing the pages with his thumbs as he read.

Annie bit her lip as she watched. “What if he _is_ here for good?” she said slowly.

“Then we’ll take care of him,” said George.

Nina frowned at him. “But that’s not our right to decide, is it? He might want to go back to his family.”

“They won’t have seen him for a century,” said Annie, a strange sadness settling on her as she did.

“Yes, but…” George said, “If — _if_ he likes us, and we like him, then what’s stopping us from taking him in?”

Nina and Annie exchanged looks.

“How can we be sure he’s not like Herrick?” said Annie quietly. George turned to her in shock.

“What do you mean?” said George. “What does that — _of course_ he’s not like Herrick, Annie!”

“No, I mean….” Annie swallowed. “Herrick was like this; he lost his memories, but he was still _him._ He was still cruel and just… _horrible_.”

“What are you saying?

Annie drew up her shoulders uncomfortably. “I don’t know, I just…the bad things might still be with him. They might have been with him all along. We have to be prepared for that.”

George looked appalled. “Annie, I’m surprised at you. You of all people. Does — _does he seem like a bad person to you?_ No — no, he is _staying_. If he wants to,” he added.

“ _George,”_ said Nina.

“He was _my_ best friend!” George hissed, taut fists pressed into the table

“He was mine, too!” said Annie. “My best friend, and my lover! I have just as much right to decide as you, and so does Nina.”

“Then what’s the problem?” said George exasperatedly. “He’s not that man, he’s…he’s completely not that anymore. He’s not even really Mitchell.”

“Exactly!” said Annie. “We can’t go back to what we had, even if he _was_ Mitchell. He’s different, he doesn’t even know us! He might want something else.”

“ _Yes_ ,” said George, “but _if_ we wants us, then we can —“

“All be a happy family again?” said Nina flatly.

George chewed on his lip. “Not — no, just —“

“You want your best friend back,” said Nina, gazing at him sadly. “You want him in those gloves with two sugars in his coffee, but it’s not going to be that, and you know it. And we don’t know if the things that made him… _hurt_ people…were a part of him all along. He might still…”

“Be poison,” Annie said quietly.

George’s face opened in a blossom of pain.

“I can’t believe you two. I really can’t,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.

“I miss him, too, George,” said Annie.

“But not enough to risk it.”

Annie didn’t answer. George’s gaze returned to John, studying a front page intently. A red-nosed couple in winter coats entered the café, huffing and puffing and giggling as they approached the counter. Their Place was winter now.

Nina looked thoughtful, her eyes resting on the couple as they ordered drinks, then Annie saw them drift to John as he read the newspapers with a small frown of concentration between his brows.

“I think…” Nina said, “we should give him a chance.”

“Really?” said George. She nodded slowly, as though her thoughts were elsewhere. “Thank you, Nina.” Nina refocused and looked at him sternly.

“I’m not saying he gets a free pass,” she said. “I’m saying we give him one chance.” Her eyes flicked to Annie. “Is that okay, Annie?”

Annie nodded, her lips pressed thin. “Yeah,” she said. “One chance.”

John was headed back towards their table, toting a newspaper, and Annie smiled widely, pushing the coffee they’d bought him forward.

“Go on,” she said as he sat back down. “Try it.”

John looked around at them watching him.

“It’s just coffee?” he said.

“Yep,” said Annie. “Nothing like pizza.”

He gave a sliver of an apprehensive smile as he took a sip. He nodded in approval.

“’S good,” he said. “Better than we got in the army, anyway.”

Annie shot Nina a triumphant look. Nina rolled her eyes.

John frowned.

“Do you have any sugar?” he asked.

George looked down at his own coffee, and Nina mirrored him, jaw turning away ever so slightly.

“Yeah,” said Annie breathlessly. “Yeah, let’s get you a couple sugars.”


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It frightened Annie a little how quickly she got used to John. Maybe she’d never patched over the hole of Mitchell’s absence after all, she thought on the third morning as she cracked eggs into the pan, and now John was here to fill it, in his own way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Not even the devils are evil by nature, since if they were, then they would not owe their origin to the Good._  
>  \- Saint Augustine
> 
>  _I love and miss you, which in no way diminishes how much I hate the person you turned out to be, but I still love and miss you._  
>  \- Anonymous
> 
>  _Oh, we're all very good at conjuring enough fear to justify whatever we want to do._  
>  \- Vedek Bareil

Life with John in the house became very normal very fast. It was almost eerie. The first few days, he got up early and helped Annie with breakfast, sipping coffee as she scrambled eggs, tapping his foot to the radio. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they just listened to Heaven’s Top 40, which was apparently an eclectic mix of American bluegrass, Korean pop, Beyoncé, and sometimes Elvis. They made wagers on the artist of the next song, using strawberries from the carton on the table as betting chips, but this usually ended with both of them polishing off the strawberries and forgetting about the bets entirely. Eventually, either George or Nina would come down with Eve — if they weren’t there already — and Annie would ply whichever tired parent with eggs and toast and tea until she felt they were properly fed. Then she usually convinced them to go back to bed, leaving Eve in her little rocking sleeper on the table.

John was good with Eve. At first, when Annie saw him holding her, all she could see was Mitchell smiling down at the ghost baby, rebounding her own question. _Does it bother you?_ But, as the mornings went by, the vision faded, and it was just John cooing at Eve at the kitchen table as she made eggs and toast.

Admittedly, she’d watched him like a hawk at first, terrified of a repeat of Herrick in the wake of her moment of panic in the café. But he had nothing of Herrick’s slyness, of his watchful smirk. He just wanted them to like him. That seemed the length and breadth of it. There were no cheap manipulations, no lies. She was sure of that. Mitchell had been a bad liar and it only stood to reason that John would be worse. But everything he did was with an almost painful sincerity.

She knew Nina had been watching him, too. But over the course of the passing days Nina’s cautious, motherly attitude seemed to give way to a genuine affection. She’d chuckled at the sheepish grin on John’s face when he was able to identify the breed of cow in that ridiculous picture on the mantle (much to George’s delight, who began grilling him, encyclopedia in hand, on which cattle breeds he’d kept at home). She and Annie had even stood by while John tried on modern clothes from George’s closet, since he’d brought no change of clothes.

“So, er…do people really wear this?” he’d asked, staring down at his own torso skeptically.

“Oh, no,” said Annie

“Oh my god,” Nina breathed.

“He said he was going to return it.”

Nina could only half-cover her grin with her hand as John tugged at the shirt, with an expression that suggested he was about to give up on the 21st century entirely.

“Oh, Nina,” Annie wheezed in horror. “He was going to wear that on a date with you.” Nina bent double with laughter as John began to unbutton the floral orange shirt as quickly as he could, kicking it to the side with the other discarded clothes.

“Let’s forget that ever happened,” he said.

Nina just wiped her eyes, gasping for breath. “I would’ve jumped George right then and there if he wore it,” she muttered. “I’d have been a goner.”

It frightened Annie a little how quickly she got used to John. Maybe she’d never patched over the hole of Mitchell’s absence after all, she thought on the third morning as she cracked eggs into the pan, and now John was here to fill it, in his own way. She received a little shock every time he did something Mitchell-like: crammed a biscuit in his mouth, raised his eyebrows in concern, clasped his hands around a mug on top of the table. But there was no air of danger or suppressed menace in him; it was innocence that clung to him instead of weary age or self-assured ego. He didn’t glare like Mitchell did — unless he was watching television, which was still a marvel of modern technology to him. He couldn’t quite get over how the flat shiny disk of a DVD could result in images on the screen, and didn’t understand George’s decidedly scientific explanation, so he glowered at the TV like it was a piece of enemy intelligence he was trying to crack. He was just as quick to smile as Mitchell had been — but on the other hand, there was less wisdom in the smile, less of the paternal concern that had made Mitchell such a comforting presence.

He was overall _less than_ Mitchell, but Annie didn’t think that was all bad. He was less raw, less jagged. He was kinder, less haunted. He was whole.

And Mitchell, she knew now, had not been whole. Mitchell had been anything but; twisted and shattered, wearing jagged bits of himself like other men wore different ties, a different sharp edge behind the eyes for each day, till they ripped through skin and sinew and showed what really lay underneath.

But that didn’t stop her from missing him, even — and sometimes especially — when John was around. There were a few terrifying moments when she wanted to shake John, to cry on his lap and plead with him to remember. Remember how to hold her, how to comfort her.

She even missed the darkness, the sallow scowl that she’d imagined she could kiss away. Mitchell, she realized, was the sort of boy she’d always wanted to love. Sweet, bruised, dark boy with long legs and hair to tangle her fingers in. Wide smile and warm arms. Like Owen had been, at the beginning. That was how Mitchell had started out. She wondered what it would have been like to love him when he was still whole. Before that little boy died, before Daisy Hannigan-Spiteri, before Lia, before the begging man at George’s feet. But he hadn’t been whole for a long time, she reminded herself. Not since that first bloodied neck in whatever hellhole had been the home of his first kill. She had only ever loved a broken boy.

She felt something cold grip at her stomach as she watched John bounce Eve on his knee. It felt a lot like the pain from the days right after Mitchell’s death. It felt like grief. Or maybe betrayal.

She had her chance here, she knew. This was John Mitchell, whole. This was her chance to love him as he was meant to be. Not as a lover, not this time. But as a friend, as a partner in their strange little household.

She watched him take a drink of coffee, then spooned eggs from the frying pan onto a plate and slid it in front of him. He gasped in mock childish awe.

“Look, Eve,” he whispered, “look what Annie made.” He hoisted her back into her sleeper and picked up a fork to begin shoveling down the eggs.

“So,” Annie said as he chewed, “I was thinking we should get out today. Go do stuff.”

He swallowed a mouthful of egg. “That so?”

“Yeah,” said Annie brightly. “So…what would you like to do? We can go around the city, see a film. They’re showing _The Sound of Music_ this weekend.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh! It’s a fantastic musical. It’s about this nun who quits being a nun because she’s this free spirit and then she goes to take care of some children during World War Two.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when John’s face hardened.

“World War Two,” he repeated slowly. “And when was that?” His expression was a study in bland interest, but Annie’s eyes didn’t miss the way his jaw had suddenly clenched.

“Um,” said Annie, subdued. “That was in the forties. The war you died in…that was the First World War. Then there was another one that kind of resulted from the first one, sort of. A couple decades later.”

“Who won?”

“Er, we did. But a lot of people died.” She cleared her throat and continued, “Anyways, um, if you want to see a film, we can do that. Just…anything you want, really. And Nina and George and Eve can come, of course.”

He nodded slowly. He looked hunted, and Annie immediately regretted her abrupt, overly cheery change of subject. Of course something like that would come as a shock. A whole other war right on the heels of the one that had killed him. Why had she even mentioned it in the first place? Why did she have to talk about the stupid _Sound of Music_?

“Yeah, all right,” John said, breaking into her self-chastisement. “Er…whatever sounds best to you. I don’t know this city, so…”

“Oh, it’s brilliant,” said Annie quickly, jumping gratefully on his train of thought. “There’s loads to do. Lots of shops and a theatre, a proper one, so we can see plays. And it’s nice to walk around, really, there’s a beach and this lovely suspension bridge. And everything’s kind of rainbow and iridescent now in Heaven, it’s amazing.”

He grinned at her enthusiasm. “Anything’s fine with me.”

“Really? Okay. Let me…” Relieved, Annie jumped up and ran to fetch a pad of paper and pens from a kitchen drawer. This was a job for lists. She slid back into her chair and began writing with a blue gel pen as a bemused John looked on. “We can do…the clubs…go down to the river…do you like churches? There’s a lot of pretty churches. I know the others couldn’t give a toss about them – well, of course George wouldn’t, he’s Jewish – but they don’t have to come along. There’s a brilliant pub around the corner, I used to work there, actually, I knew the owner’s son. Ooo, pity it’s not Christmas! They always do a panto, and there’s a little Christmas market in the shopping quarter. Still, we’ll have to get you some new clothes…I’m sure the shops sell stuff for your era…”

As she wrote and talked, she kept one eye on John. The grin had fallen away to reveal something very fragile, and Annie was afraid to stop babbling in case she broke it. When she had written out every activity she could possibly think of, she let herself lapse into a humming, nervous sort of silence, while John watched Eve curl her little fingers around his own. If Annie thought he’d let her hold his other hand, she would have reached out and taken it. But instead she said, “I’m sorry, John. That was a rotten way to tell you.”

He gave a tiny, spasmic shrug. “It’s a rotten world.”

“And we’re in a better place now,” Annie said, only half joking. He smiled ruefully and met her eyes. The corners of his mouth twitched higher as Eve sneezed in her sleep, tiny fingers tightening around his pinkie.

“Yeah, it is better,” he said quietly.

A sound from the stairwell announced that one of the sleepy parents had finally woken up. John used his left hand to scoop the last bite of eggs from his plate, as his right was currently occupied by a sleeping baby.

“Did you wake up early like this?” he said through a mouthfull, “When you were…you know…”

“A ghost?” Annie said. “Yeah. Well, I didn’t actually sleep when I was a ghost. So I was always awake and always making tea or coffee…I was a bit of a loony, actually. Or not. Cause it did keep me sane. The tea. It helped.” She trailed off and watched Eve’s tiny chest rise and fall in the sleeper. Someone entered the kitchen, and out of the corner of her eye she saw George lean against the counter with a handful of mail.

“Morning,” said John. George grunted in response. Annie rolled her eyes and got up to start some tea.

“Nina sleeping?” she asked as she put the water on.

“Mm-hm,” George said absently, eyes scanning a letter. “Ridiculous,” he announced to no one in particular. “Junk mail. In Heaven. Who is in charge of this…” He snorted and shuffled the flyer to the back, then began to open a thick off-white envelope with his thumb.

Annie went back to the table to lean over Eve and kiss her lightly on the nose. Eve squirmed. “Oh, no, no, don’t wake up,” Annie whispered. “It’s all right. Shh.” Eve shifted, gurgled, then stilled again. Annie let out a sigh of relief, smiling at John. But John looked back at her, straight-faced. He suddenly looked almost nervous.

“Annie,” said John seriously. “I know this might not be the right time, but…”

“What?” Annie asked.

John frowned at his finger still held captive by Eve’s small hand. “I was wondering…if could ask about…me. About Mitchell. At some point. It doesn’t have to be now,” he added hurriedly. “I’d just like to know some things, I suppose.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” said Annie, trying to sound nonchalant, but the forced cheeriness of her voice fell flat. She cleared her throat, smiled. “I’d love to tell you whatever you want. Really. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Right. Thanks.” John pressed his lips into an almost-smile and nodded, a bit awkwardly. Annie was about to ask if there was anything in particular he wanted to know, when George spoke.

“Annie,” he said. His voice sounded funny; high-pitched and strangled. “Annie, could I talk to you alone?”

“Er,” said Annie. “Yeah? Sure.”

John seemed to take his cue, and gently disentangled himself from the sleeping baby and headed out of the kitchen and upstairs. The kettle began to whistle shrilly. Annie turned off the heat and poured the hot water into the teapot. George hovered near the counter, staring down at a piece of mail.

“I’m taking John out today,” Annie announced. “I was thinking a walk along the river by the bridge, and then maybe lunch at a pub, and then we could see a film. Or whatever he wants really, but we have to go shopping at some point, because he’s only got the one pair of trousers and the one shirt, and I’ll be damned if I’m letting him get as scruffy as Mitchell was — “

“Annie,” George interrupted, and his voice was high and taut again. “He’s not a visiting relative. It might not be the _best_ time to take him sightseeing.”

Annie turned in the middle of fitting a tea cozy on the pot. “Well, you’ve changed your tune,” she said incredulously. “What about all that stuff about him staying and _taking care_ of him?”

“I just — I don’t think we should get too attached.”

Annie stared. “ _Get too_ — “

George interrupted her by silently thrusting something into her hands. Thrown, Annie looked down at it. It was a letter, printed on thick, off-white paper that matched the envelope. There was an address in one corner and a stamped seal of some kind at the bottom. She looked up at George, who only swallowed and nodded as if to encourage her to read it. Annie walked to the table and sat as she read, her frown deepening into an indignant scowl with every successive line. George started pacing back and forth across the tiny kitchen as though he were trying to rub out the pattern on the linoleum.

The letter read:

> _Dear Mr. Mitchell,_
> 
> _Your departure from the Eternal Holding Centre has been noted. Under more usual circumstances, we assure you that They would find you and return you to your cell at Their earliest convenience. There appear to be, however, some complications with additional claims upon your soul signature. We request a meeting with you in two days, after you have had lunch. You may bring the others._
> 
> _Sincerely._
> 
> _P.S. There is something outside your window. It is not a bird, but it will eat any breadcrumbs you provide._
> 
> _P.P.S. Do not wear salmon to the meeting._

“What…the hell is this,” said Annie, looking up. “What did I just read? Who is this even from?”

“I don’t know!” said George with a high pitched, mirthless laugh. “Big Brother! The Government. God himself. _Jesus_ —“

“I doubt it’s from Jesus — “

“ _Annie,_ ” George said, “I mean…do you know what this means?”

“George, I can barely understand this letter, let alone – “

“It means he’s not supposed to be here,” said George, dropping into the seat opposite and scrubbing his hands through his hair. His voice was cracking with anguish. “It means they’ve found him and they’re going to take him away.”

“Who is?” said Annie. “Who is this even from?”

George gestured vaguely. “I don’t — the letter says _They_ with a capital. So…Things. Bad _Things_. Also, they used the passive voice through the entire thing, and that’s just bloody unprofessional…”

Annie scanned the letter again. “What’s the…Eternal Holding Centre?”

George shrugged uncomfortably. “I dunno, but sounds hellish.”

“George,” Annie said, looking up at him, “we have to give this to John.”

“ _No_ ,” said George, panic flaring in his eyes.

“Why not?”

“Because they obviously want to put him away, or something! In — in one of these _cells!”_ he said, pulling the letter back towards him. “No — we need to throw it in the bin, and _not_ let him go to this meeting.”

“But they said we can come, too!” Annie said. “And what if they can give us answers? That’s what we’re trying to do, isn’t it? We want to know why John is here. And anyways, you’re being weird, you’re blowing hot and cold! I mean, you just told me not to ‘ _get too attached.’_ ”

“I got scared,” George moaned into his palms, rubbing at his face, distraught. “I’m sorry, Annie, I’m…oh, god…what if they take him away? We just got him, and he — he’s _whole,_ and I haven’t even shown him the Real Hustle yet — “

“Oh my god,” said Annie, leaning back and raising her hands. “I’m not even going to touch that. George, I think if they wanted to take him away, they’d have come for him already. We can’t just keep him captive in the house and hope they never find him, cause obviously they have!

“But — “

“You can’t make this about you! It’s about him and…and his _soul,_ apparently.”

“I can’t lose him again,” said George faintly, shoulders hunched as he stared at his hands.

“He isn’t Mitchell,” Annie said, soft. “He’s another person entirely, and he needs to decide for himself.”

George looked up at her, pain and grief etched clearly on his face. Finally, his expression crumpled into something more settled, and slightly guilty. He nodded jerkily several times, as though steeling himself.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. You’re…yeah. Okay.”

Annie reached over and clasped his hand tightly for a second before standing.

“I’ll give it to him,” she said, taking the letter.

John opened his door almost immediately after she knocked.

“Hi,” she said. She braced herself, clutching the letter tightly in her hands.

“Hello,” he said. He looked strange, she thought. Pale. He didn’t seem to notice that she was tense, too.

“Er, something arrived…for you,” Annie said. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, no,” he said, standing aside formally to invite her in. It was the first time she’d been inside the room since her cleaning spree, and she was happy to see there was minimal damage to her careful arrangements -- or at least by Mitchell’s old standards of cleanliness. The bedclothes were a mess, but only a few of the stacks of books and music were in disarray, evidently from John rummaging through them in exploration of his future self’s music and literature tastes.

“Er, so,” she began awkwardly, turning to look at John, who closed his door and faced her, shoulders high, hands in his trouser pockets, looking oddly nervous. He was still wearing the same white shirt and brown trousers, washed daily now, because none of George’s things had fit him, and there seemed to be an unspoken agreement between all of them — or at least, between Annie, John and Nina — that putting on Mitchell’s things would be too weird. “Something came for you in the mail — “

“Annie, I need to show you something,” John said. His voice was hoarse.

“Oh,” Annie breathed. “Okay, what — what is it?”

John moved past her to the bed.

“When we were at the café…I found this,” he said, pulling a thick square of folded paper from beneath his mattress. “I mean…I just took it back to read, but then I found this inside…” As he unfolded it, Annie saw it was the inner page of a newspaper. John handed it to her, his mouth drawn in tight. She smoothed it and saw, with a jolt, that there was a large black-and-white photo of her, Annie, beside a bolded headline:

JOHN MITCHELL: ASK ME ABOUT THE BOX TUNNEL 20

The 20 murders they’re not telling you about!

Everything seemed to stop for a moment.

Annie felt sick. Suddenly she couldn’t control the sob-like hitch in her breath that came as she read those words over again.

 _Fucking Heaven_. Fucking omnipotence and omniscience, and pretense of benevolence.

John’s face was pained when she looked up.

“I don’t know how to tell you about this…” she whispered. “John…let’s sit down.”

They sat side by side on the bed, like a bizarre pantomime of a soap opera where someone has to break the difficult news. _Your father was killed in a car crash. Linda isn’t your real mother. I’m really your half sister. You killed twenty people in one blood-drunk night, and when you were held accountable by your own victims, you called it mind games._

John moved like a wire pulled taut, slow and deliberate. Annie looked down again at the newspaper in her hands, waiting for words to come.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” she started faintly. Her voice became suddenly hoarse and she had to clear her throat before going on. “It… _tore_ … _everything_ apart.” She pulled in a shaking breath, trying to steady herself, knowing John’s serious brown eyes were watching her.

“What exactly did I do?” John said quietly. Annie had the feeling he was only this calm because she was so obviously not.

“ _He_ ,” Annie corrected. “He…he was angry because…oh god, I don’t even know. It was all so…it was Lucy, his girlfriend, I think. Lucy betrayed him. And so he…and Daisy Hannigan-Spiteri…got on a train…and _tore twenty people apart_.”

She didn’t even try to keep the bite, the venom from her voice. Her hands shook, and her throat ached with tears. There was a hot, liquid bubbling of anger in her stomach that came just from remembering, from speaking that terrible truth out loud.

“It was his idea, he said. He told me. It was his sick, _fucking_ idea. One person hurt him and he decided it was his right to take it out on humanity. I mean, it hardly matters _why_ , though, does it?” The tears were flowing freely now, spilling onto the newspaper. “I fell in love with him because he rescued me from Purgatory, did I tell you that? I fell in love with Mitchell…and the last thing I did before he died was kiss him and tell him he was the love of my long, long life, because what else could I say?” Her voice cracked suddenly, as though under the weight of that memory, that terrible night that stood out like a raw, ugly wound in her mind. “He was…so broken and I needed to mend him before the end. I needed to let him know I loved him. We all loved him so much, and he did _this.”_

She stabbed the tearstained headline with her finger, ripping through the newspaper. John pulled it gently from her grasp, but she saw his hands were shaking, too.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m so sorry, John. I’m so sorry.”

He only gazed fixedly down at the damp newspaper as he refolded it, his face frozen somewhere between horror and nausea.

“You’re not him, though,” Annie said. “John, you’re not him —”

“If I hadn’t become a vampire, all those people would still be alive,” John said flatly. He was staring now at his own shaking hands, a vicious expression on his face. “If I’d just died like I was supposed to, my victims would be alive.” He looked at Annie then, fiercely, as though daring her to disagree.

“You made a decision that saved your men,” Annie said softly. “You made the right — “

“No,” said John, shaking his head, “no, no, I made the wrong decision. The wrong _fucking decision!”_ He forced these last words violently through clenched teeth, and suddenly made a convulsive gesture, crumpling inwards and smashing his fists again and again into the back of his bowed head. He let out a horrible muffled wail, and Annie grasped his hands in her own in a desperate attempt to keep him from hitting himself, until he finally sat there, bent double, sobbing into his knees as Annie held his hands and bit back tears of her own.

They sat that way for a long time. John’s breath finally calmed, and Annie opened her eyes to see that the sky outside was tinged a brilliant pinkish orange by the rising sun. She could feel the tears on her lashes whenever she blinked, but resisted the urge to wipe her eyes, because that would mean taking her hands out of John’s. She could hear the television downstairs, the slam of the microwave door. George and Eve and Nina living wonderful, normal lives. It was such a beautiful collection of sounds, she thought, then suddenly wanted to laugh at herself getting emotional about microwaves.

She felt John stir, and cautiously loosened her grip on his hands. He didn’t try to hit himself again, so she leaned back, gently disentangling her fingers from his, and settling with rubbing his back in slow circles with one hand while she dried her eyes with the other. She would’ve sung to him, but all that came to mind were Beyoncé lyrics, and she didn’t think that was exactly appropriate for this situation. It was odd — after so many months and years of dealing with grief, both her own, and other peoples’ (she’d watched her family grieve her in her own home; seen her mother’s final farewell at her grave; saw George, when he thought he lost his father; all of them when they lost Mitchell, then Nina; and finally when she stood alone with the burden of three dead friends weighing her shoulders), she still had no clue how to deal with it. Basic ground rules had been established: don’t try to change the subject, don’t act cheery, even if you’re uncomfortable. Don’t punch anyone. But the actual raw savagery of grief still hurt her to witness. She would never get used to it, she thought.

She’d been dealing with the Box Tunnel 20 for so long that it was more like a dull ache now — the bruise left by a pointless, animal crime and the revelation of someone she loved as something dark and cruel and cowardly, but with just enough of the man she loved underneath to make it infinitely more painful. Why couldn’t he have just become fully evil once the cat was out of the bag, like people did in old crime shows? But real people didn’t work like that. Mitchell had never been wholly evil — he had that streak of humanity that made the things he’d done all the worse.

Usually, she could talk or think about all this in a flat, monotone, way, like a witness who has had to recount the events of the crime so often that they’ve boiled it down to a concise, emotionless anecdote, or a patient who has seen so many doctors that they’ve started repeating their complaint in the same exact words to each one. But talking about it just now had brought a bit of the immediacy back, a bit of the sharp, hot, disbelieving grief.

And for John, she realized, this was as fresh as the day she herself found out. The day she’d confronted Mitchell in the sitting room. _Was Daisy even involved? Yes. But it was my idea._ She hadn’t a clue about the stages of grief. She couldn’t even remember how many there were — five? Probably? How long would it take for him to deal with something as catastrophic as this? _Note to self,_ she thought, _research grief and/or shock and methods for facilitating recovery. Postscript note to self: why did I not do this sooner?_

And why had whatever _fucking twats_ who made the newspapers decided to break it to him with a tabloid headline in a paper? If she ever met anyone in connection with the Celestial Gazette, she was going to roundhouse kick them. Or punch them in the nose. Bit more reasonable. But the notion of causing as much bodily pain as possible to said fucking twats was very appealing at the moment.

But retribution in any form would have to wait. Because she had John to take care of, and that was enough for the moment.

If only there were something she could do, something before the dreaded Meeting, that might take away some of that anguish…

“John,” she said suddenly, careful to keep her voice low. “Why don’t you take a nice bath and get cleaned up, okay?”

John didn’t move for a second, but then he nodded groggily.

“Besides,” Annie said. “I have an idea.”


End file.
